Shadows Illuminated
by Thalia Kendall
Summary: A set of vignettes based on "Secrets and Shadows", of various characters and their lives. Meetings, visits, and coming to understandings with each other.
1. Meeting

A/N: Hey guys, remember that D/G-with-a-million-side-ships... thing... known as Secrets and Shadows? Being the utter t00b that I am, I decided to write a series of vignettes... outtakes, if you will, of scenes that were not shown in the fic. Perhaps a bit of tying up loose ends and the like. No matter. I hope you enjoy! This first is how Emma Dobbs met Seamus Finnigan.  
  
Disclaimer: The day that I gain ownership of HP characters is infamous for a completely different reason, one explained in the Book of Revelations in the Bible.  
  
~*~  
  
It was rather unfair, she figured, that despite being able to trace her bloodline back to sterling purity for fifteen generations, she was just like any other first year now. On equal grounds with the most filthy of the Mudbloods and lost, small in the hallway and unsure of where to go.  
  
The hallway. Many hallways. Stairs that did not like to stay put and did not obey her orders. Students flitting back and forth with no cessation, no care.  
  
And where was the Transfiguration classroom anyway?  
  
She had become separated from her Housemates after breakfast, taking the time to write an owl back to her parents that she had made it into Slytherin, and with every passing second, ominous tickings like a death watch beetle, she was more and more small against the wall, eyes wide, uncertain.  
  
Where was she to turn?  
  
Missing class was unheard of in her family. There were expectations that she had to fulfill. Despite the rabble of plebeians filling the school, she was a student, and a Dobbs was perfect in his or her purity.  
  
Purity couldn't save her now.  
  
She meandered hopelessly down the hallway, her small face pale and frozen into a blank mask (show no emotions, because you have none). No, that room could not be the Transfiguration classroom... there were cauldrons and Hufflepuffs in there. Must be a dangerous combination. But there were so many places that she could go, and none of the right, and this proud pureblooded Slytherin was but a child now, back to the wall and eyes trying to find the right way.  
  
And then another student, taller than her, sandy hair and easy smiles and a garish red and gold tie, stepped into her path, looking down at her inquisitively. "Hello."  
  
She was not to associate with riff-raff. That was Rule #1.  
  
He was almost about to step past her when her hand, as if of its own accord, reached out and tugged on his sleeve (close enough to feel the warmth coming from his skin). "Hello, I'm lost..."  
  
And he stopped, cocking his head to the side and giving her a crooked, boyish smile. "And where might you be headin', me lass?" An Irish accent, exaggerated, and she felt... easy, free.  
  
"The Transfiguration classroom," she told him, her voice almost shy rather than cool and haughty. She wasn't his 'lass', really. But he was the first person who stopped for her that day.  
  
"Ah, come with me," he told her, taking her small hand in his larger one in a rather frank and impulsive manner, leading her down the right path with sure-footed steps. "I'm Seamus Finnigan, by the way."  
  
"Seamus Finnigan," she repeated, trying to emulate the lilt that his voice had put into the name. He grinned at her, leading her around a corner.  
  
The passed three statues, five suits of armour and seven doors before he came to a stop. Pointing to the name engraved on a placard overhead, he read aloud. "Professor Minerva McGonagall, Transfiguration. Right here, then, Miss..."  
  
"Dobbs," she whispered, giving him a genuine smile, "Emma Dobbs."  
  
"Charmed to meet a charming lady," he jokingly bowed over her small white hand, before releasing her and stepping back. "Good luck, Emma."  
  
And then he was gone, striding down the hall and Emma stepped silently into the classroom, taking a seat next to a sour-looking Cecilia Pyre.  
  
His surname wasn't one of the pureblood clans.  
  
But his hand had been warm, and his voice had been kind.  
  
She was too young to want to kill him yet, anyway. It wasn't too wrong if no one knew, right?  
  
As Professor McGonagall walked into the classroom and shut the door, Emma glanced at the Transfiguration teacher and smiled to herself.  
  
So Gryffindor was a houseful of hotheaded, arrogant heroes.  
  
But there was at least one instance of redemption. She was lucky to have found him. It must mean something rather special, really, but she would think about it later. 


	2. Communion

A/N: Another vignette of S&Sverse, this time Su Li and Cassius Warrington, after she get the Defense Against the Dark Arts position. Angst warning, but I hope you like anyway! Leave me a review and tell me what you think!  
  
Disclaimer: Do we really have to go over this? -.-  
  
~*~  
  
She had come in that afternoon, after a lunch with the Headmaster that she did not really taste, to tell him that she had found a job.  
  
They said that he couldn't hear, that he was almost as good as dead. A thread of life only as brief and thin as a shadow, the only hope they'd clung to.  
  
She had been afraid that his parents, whom she had never met, would have taken the option of euthanasia, but the first time that she had visited, he was alive, potions dripping through tubes into his pale arms and so surrounded by machines that he looked almost small. She had smiled, bittersweet. He was a good head taller than her, could pick her up like she weighed NOTHING...  
  
The nurses and orderlies had never really asked who she was. They assumed that she was friends with the rich, handsome young wizard before the tragedy that had befallen him. Something about her manner, quiet and almost unassuming though it was, made them back away. A widow or a mother who had lost her child had the same look that was present in the young woman's eyes, though perhaps a bit more resigned.  
  
She walked purposefully into the room today, footsteps quiet as she strode down the narrow corridor, neat black hair pulled behind her, sensible black shoes peeping out from underneath a long, narrow skirt.  
  
There was a chair by the unmoving man's bed, not particularly comfortable, but she sat down and reached over, taking his hand. Cool, dry, limp. His hands were bigger than hers.  
  
"I got a job," she told him. The conventional things first. "Defense professor, at Hogwarts." A bitter little smile twitching at the corners of dry pink lips. "Think they'd listen to me, the students?"  
  
No answer, no response, but she gave his hand a slight squeeze, narrowing her eyes. "They say that one learns while teaching, too. I certainly hope so. Kevin's finding out from me who did this."  
  
In life, he would be smirking and telling her not to worry her pretty little head about such things. And then he would grin as she glared and kiss her cheek. She suddenly felt cold.  
  
She was so intent staring at his stubbornly unmoving face that her eyes began to tear. Giving him a venomous glare (that in other times he'd raise his hands in mock surrender to before holding her until she calmed), she spoke again.  
  
"You're going to wake up, Warrington. You're GOING to open your eyes and smirk and hack me off and it's going to be the way things are SUPPOSED to be. You fucking miserable wanker... if you're not going to stop being a contrary bastard about this, I'll never kiss you again."  
  
If she had screamed, it would have been less painful and less jarring. But her voice was almost calm, smooth... low and modulated like a lady's, and it belied the vehemence of her words.  
  
"I'm going to hate you forever if you don't wake up, do you know that?" Almost conversational. "Ask Tracey Davis what happens when I decide to hate somebody. You wouldn't want that to happen to you."  
  
There were tears in her eyes, and her voice grew softer. "One day, WHEN you wake up, I am going to pay you back double for all the... aggravation... that you're causing me. See if I don't."  
  
And despite all the virulence of her words, the threats of vengeance, she was quiet when she stood, reaching out and brushing his dark hair from his forehead. She had called him a swarthy git more times than she could count.  
  
She turned to leave, her eyes downcast, and nearly ran over the tall blonde woman standing at the door.  
  
Su's face was oh-so-blank when she looked up. A woman, at least twenty years older than herself, arrayed in simple but elegant black robes, cornsilk hair in a neat chignon and blue eyes similarly blankly dejected.  
  
The blonde spoke first. "Who are you, miss?"  
  
"Su Li," came the laconic answer.  
  
"You've been visiting my son," the woman said evenly, raising an eyebrow in silent query. "The nurse told me that you came a few times before as well." The nurse had also mentioned how the small woman standing before her had once railed at an orderly for neglecting atrophy-prevention charms until the young man had almost been reduced to tears.  
  
"Yes," Su nodded carefully. Cassius had certainly mentioned his parents before. She knew their names, but nothing else. That such a deliberately infuriating prat could be the offspring of so aristocratic-seeming a lady was a bit puzzling, but Su said nothing.  
  
She didn't seem inclined to say more, but the girl's eyes were still wet, though her chin was firm and she was not openly weeping. Cordelia Warrington had the notion that this Su Li was not one for tears most of the time.  
  
The blonde woman did not betray how much of Su's conversation with the comatose young man on the bed she had heard, though she gazed somewhat curiously at the pale, petite, dark-haired little woman in plain clothes and a schooled poker-face that would have made many the stoical Slytherin proud... Su murmured a random polite greeting and stepped around her, disappearing down the hall with stiff shoulders.  
  
Cordelia walked over and sat down in the chair that the younger woman had just vacated, and touched her son's hand.  
  
It was still warm from when Su had been holding it, a drop of moisture by the thumb.  
  
The mother understood, and when she, too, had stood up, she was smiling somewhat.  
  
Pain shared was pain halved, so the saying went. Perhaps it was not halved, but if her son had been happy with his life the way it was before, it was more likely that he would fight with all he had to return to it.  
  
She left the unresponsive young man with a gentle admonition to remember not to irritate the girl far too much, knowing somehow that it would be unheeded, and the girl would love him anyway. It was a strangely comforting thought. 


End file.
